Rob Enderle wrote an intriguing editorial for Digital Trends entitled "You can't call 'time out' in Silicon Valley," which examines the current battle between Apple, Google and Microsoft over the future of computing. In it, he draws some interesting parallels from the history of warfare, and notes that Microsoft and Google have made some of the classic blunders that have caused great armies to fail dramatically.

That is one market Microsoft owned by default... and then they lost it... not once... but twice.

First Microsoft had both the mail server (Exchange) and a mobile device... and yet they got beaten by RIM to mobile email.

Next, they solve the email problem... and then they get beaten by Apple on the device as well as the software ecosystem.

It's hilarious if you think about it.
My own view is Microsoft's mobile failure was really corporate misdirection. They kept trying to have a unified OS that looked the same in mobile as it did on the desktop. Early mobile versions even had the start menu.

Now that they changed the corporate direction, they have released a decent mobile OS... but it took them a really long time... lol.